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Updated: June 11, 2025
The necessity she would have been under of crushing such a girl, who was now eighteen, would have been distasteful and unprofitable; she was very glad to get rid of her stepdaughter, always provided it could be done decently and without scandal.
Yes, Jacqueline must be married; that was the resolution to which Madame de Nailles had come after several nights of sleeplessness. It was her fixed idea, replacing in her brain that other fixed idea which, willingly or unwillingly, she saw she must give up the idea of keeping her stepdaughter in the shade. "Countess! Ambassadress!" repeated M. de Nailles, with rather a melancholy smile.
"It seems a little hard that there is nobody but Alan to do anything! And how long is it to go on?" The priest bent forward. "You mean ?" "How long will my stepdaughter let it go on?" said Augustina impatiently. "She will be mistress here directly." The eyes of her companion flinched, as though something had struck him.
Then the girl, holding herself erect and rather defiant, drew her stepmother's arm in hers, and turned to Helbeck. "Will you please show us the way up?" Helbeck took a small hand-lamp and led the way, bidding the newcomers beware of the slipperiness of the old polished boards. Mrs. Fountain walked with caution, clinging to her stepdaughter.
The speakers were now approaching the spot where the father and the haltered stepdaughter were standing. The former, a hard-featured, sullen man of about forty-five, was addressing the crowd. The latter, hiding as much of her face as she could beneath her grey shawl, stood with her hands clasped before her and her eyes fixed on the ground. Mute resignation was written on every line of her face.
To this witch she would go and beg her to make her a mask with the face of her stepdaughter, and when she had the mask the rest would be easy. She told her daughter what she meant to do, and although the daughter could only say 'dirty creatures, in answer, she nodded and smiled and looked well pleased. Everything fell out exactly as the woman had hoped.
Madame de Nailles superintended the instruction of her stepdaughter with motherly solicitude, seconded, however, by a 'promeneuse', or walking-governess, which left her free to fulfil her own engagements in the afternoons. The walking-governess is a singular modern institution, intended to supply the place of the too often inconvenient daily governess of former times.
Lady Maggie Trent, a stepdaughter of the Earl of Dorminster, was one of those young women who had baffled description for some years before she had commenced to take life seriously. She was neither fair nor dark, petite nor tall. No one could ever have called her nondescript, or have extolled any particular grace of form or feature.
From her room he was in a manner excluded. If he went to her door to make some benevolent and paternal inquiry, he was met on the threshold by Ann Woolper, the sleepless and unresting. If he hinted a natural desire to see his invalid stepdaughter, he was told that she had that moment fallen asleep, or that she was too ill to see him.
Bat's unyielding interrogation came sharply. Standing nodded. "I hadn't thought, Bat," he said. Then he drew a deep breath. "I surely hadn't, but I guess you're right. She's my stepdaughter. And I've a right to do the thing you say. Yes. It's queer when I think of it," he went on musingly. "When I married her mother the girl didn't seem to come into our reckoning.
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